HALIFAX — At Town Meeting this year, Mitchell Green reclaimed his seat on the Selectboard after a six-year absence and Brad Rafus, the road commissioner and road supervisor, won the board seat to which he was appointed on an interim basis last November.
And with these changes in board composition also comes a departure in the way appointments are made, in the form of the board's decision to exclude the public from consideration of whom to appoint to two openings on the Planning Commission/Zoning Board of Adjustment.
At the March 22 regularly scheduled meeting, the board dispatched with all other appointments in the public meeting - more than a dozen - but declared its intention to consider the Planning Commission/ZBA appointments behind closed doors.
The board interviewed four of the five candidates at a specially noticed executive session on March 29. It was to have interviewed the fifth candidate - and make its decision - by or at the next regularly scheduled Selectboard meeting on April 5.
The two current members filling those seats - Stephan Chait and Linda Lyon - both submitted letters affirming their interest in continuing on the boards.
Three other individuals - Turner Lewis, Peggy Rafus (wife of board member Brad Rafus), and Kaitlin Stone (daughter of a member of the road crew) - also submitted letters of interest.
Departure from recent years
The Vermont League of Cities and Towns (VLCT) Selectboard Handbook notes that the Vermont Legislature “crafted [...] limited exceptions to the open meeting law” for those circumstances where “private interests may outweigh the public's interest.”
But the VLCT notes that because these exceptions create “the opportunity for abuse,” Vermont courts have - and Selectboards should - construe these exceptions narrowly.
One of these “limited” exceptions permits a board to go into executive session to consider appointments for public office.
In a departure from recent years, the Selectboard invoked this exception to consider its appointments for the two Planning Commission/ZBA seats.
Asked why the board felt it necessary or wise to do so, Green declared that they “always” do these in executive session.
Chair Lewis Sumner said that he might ask questions of the candidates that they might be too embarrassed to answer in a public meeting.
Rafus said that his experience of being interviewed for an interim seat during a public meeting persuaded him that it is little more than an opportunity for people to express their opinions and ask irrelevant questions, and that having the discussion in public meeting puts a lot of pressure on the people making the decision.
A controversial decision
The composition of the Planning Commission/Zoning Board of Appeals is of particular interest in light of the ongoing legal proceedings and a narrow vote concerning a quarry in the town's conservation district proposed jointly by C.A. Denison Lumber Co, Inc. and Ashfield Stone LLC.
In October 2015, after 18 months of public hearings and private deliberations, a majority of the ZBA - including Chait and Lyon - authored a 10-page decision explaining their conclusion that, based on the evidence offered by all parties and following an analysis of the town plan, zoning bylaws, and state statutes, the zoning permit for conditional use of the property could not be granted.
The vote was 3–2.
In addition to an outstanding decision of the Act 250 commission, two legal actions are pending in the state Environmental Court.
The quarry applicant has appealed the ZBA's denial of the permit, and the applicant has filed a lawsuit against the town, seeking an immediate issuance of the permit on the grounds that the ZBA failed to consider the application in a timely manner.